Pissed.
He fucking knew it.
He’d been trying to demanifest this the entire way up. Zhou had fished him out of a festival he’d been enjoying, on paid holiday, to take him to a fucking rift. Two days after they’d finished the observatory rift together, no less.
Nico stood and watched his lantern reach the moon. In the reflection, it flickered— gold flame mirrored in violet. He squinted at it.
That was it. He was leaving. He had ignored so many chances to leave: the moment he heard Zhou call to him, the calligraphy booth, the fence. His gut had been warning him the whole time, and he’d kept brushing it aside.
With an exasperated sigh he looked down to where Zhou should have fallen into the water—
Nico turned abruptly, scanning the space behind him. The silence confirmed nothing was there, just empty air.
He took a deep inhale, cursing himself for continuing this line of action instead of leaving. Then he leaned over again, eyes dropping to the water, needing to confirm what he thought he’d seen. His reflection stared back at him, bent over the ledge. And beside it stood Zhou.
He hated night rifts so much.
Whether he was frozen with fear or anger, he watched idly as the Zhou in the reflection moved. Violet mana flared and—
FWOOSH.
A slab of stone surged up behind him, and launched Nico off the aqueduct.
***
He braced for the descent as the force ejected him from the aqueduct’s edge, but his feet hit ground before his mind caught up. He landed in a heavy thunk, like he had stomped too hard in anticipation of a step that wasn’t there.
Nico reoriented himself from his not-fall and took inventory of the situation. The stone path now expanded seamlessly in front of him. The rubble that had been there moments ago was gone. The aqueduct stood whole again, its arches cascading down the mountainside in an unbroken line. Bioluminescent moss clung to the stone, casting an aquamarine glow that softened the night. Beneath his boots, the structure vibrated with the dull, continuous rush of running water. The aqueduct was in operation again.
|| SYSTEM NOTIFICATION ||
[Mission: find the core wish! (?> ?
On the swipe that dismissed the notification, his hand accidentally grazed where Zhou had tied a scarf to his face. A material harder than fabric met his fingers. He dragged his thumb along shallow grooves, following the cut lines until the shape asserted itself beneath his hand: a full wooden mask, carved into a grin.
He checked his clothing. The linen jacket remained, but his outfit had shifted into something cohesive: a wrapped linen shirt tied at the back, wide flowy pants, long sock-like shoes. The rift turned him into a hypebeast stylized in ancient festival streetwear.
As he turned in place, checking out his sick new fit, a silhouette approached from higher up on the aqueduct.
Zhou stepped into view on the span that had long collapsed in reality, also wearing a full wooden mask. He lifted a hand and gave a casual wave.
“Hey.”
Nico, furious, did not respond.
With a laugh, the Sage stepped closer and extended his hand, palm open.
“Give me your mask.”
|| SKILL ACTIVATED || [?? Arc Lash (A) | stuns on contact | "electric whip"]
Nico lashed out at him, lightning cracking from his palm to the opposite wall.
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Violet flared as Zhou grounded his stance. In a sweep of his hand, his aether caught the bulk of the electric current, redirecting it into striking the mountain behind them. His other hand lifted with controlled strength, raising a some slab that intercepted the remaining sparks.
Nico was already moving. The moment the lightning left him, he rushed forward.
|| SKILL ACTIVATED || [? Gale Step (A)]
Wind burst beneath his feet, carrying him upward. From close range—
|| SKILL ACTIVATED || [火 Dragon's Breath | "pretty cool fireball"]
He expelled a fireball downward, sending himself back in the recoil.
Even at close range, Zhou seized the flame inches from his mask, and redirected it beneath Nico’s projected landing point. Golden mana concentrated around Nico’s feet—
|| SKILL ACTIVATED || [? Extinguish (B) | "air removal"]
Air rushed out from the volume under him, starving the fire of oxygen before he hit the ground.
“Wow,” Zhou said cheerfully. “You’re that mad about me pushing you?”
“I am.”
|| SKILL ACTIVATED || [? Zephyr Veil (A) | "wind shield & sword"]
He carved the wind wrapped around him outward in sharp, segmented arcs, sending dense strikes in rapid succession. The intent was to test the speed and capacity of Zhou’s aether and nullification.
Zhou only tilted his head. The grin carved on his mask was annoyingly cool. With a clap, he drove his hands forward, splitting the wind at his fingertips with a blade of violet mana, down the angle of his arms, dispersing it into a broad triangular wake.
|| SKILL ACTIVATED || [?? Arc Lash (A) | "electric whip"]
As Nico sent lightning surging toward him, Zhou tore his hands apart—
|| STATUS ALERT || [Skill ?? Arc Lash | HAS BEEN NULLIFIED]
— and reduced it to ambient mana before it could strike.
Nico noted how Zhou manipulated the wind slashes with his aether. While lightning, with its high activation energy and rapid mana loss in transit, proved more efficient to nullify post-cast rather than preemptively. The Sage had weighed the risk of failing to intercept against mana cost and chose the former, skilled enough to nullify lightning mid-flight.
“So you have the Sage skill,” Nico huffed.
Zhou tilted his mask. “It’s mine after all?”
|| SKILL ACTIVATED || [? Gale Step (A)]
Stalagmites speared upward from the point Nico launched himself from. As he cleared them, the gale he sent Zhou’s way folded into a purple haze, converted into the Sage’s aether.
|| SKILL ACTIVATED || [? Gale Step (A)]
The redirected wind slammed into Nico’s next burst of motion, knocking him off balance. He stumbled, but still cleared the second set of spikes Zhou wrenched from the ground at the same time.
A third formation peaked beneath him—
|| STATUS ALERT || [Skill ? Gale Step (A) | HAS BEEN NULLIFIED]
|| SKILL ACTIVATED || [?? Lightning Strike (B) | "smites"]
Zhou launched himself backward, ejecting a stone diagonally to kick off from it. The space it bought him was just enough. He caught the lightning with his aether as it closed in, its path flaring violet under his manipulation, once again redirected as if it hit an unseen barrier. But with insufficient control, a remaining jolt grounded through his feet, snapping up his legs and stunning him into a brief stumble.
Nico landed on a flat stone protrusion— a stalagmite cut neatly at the base. Rather than pursue, he gave up the small opening created by the stun, and watched Zhou retreat instead. He caught his breath and focused instead on settling the field data in his head.
Lightning moved too fast for Zhou to fully manipulate with aether alone. Nullifying it after the skill was cast was clearly more mana-efficient, just as Zhou had mentioned on their walk up. But it came with limits, some sort of refractory period or activation clause. He had nullified the first lightning skill cleanly, then attempted to intercept the final surge with aether and failed.
It was a relief the encounter stopped there. How much mana either of them had left was unclear, and things were already trending toward a bad situation if Zhou hadn’t—
“Oh~ How’d you know it wasn’t me?”
A masked face tilted into view with a braid of silver hair dangling beside it. Thankfully, the mask hid Nico’s expression. He appreciated the flat platform Zhou had created earlier, so it was preferred that the Sage not see his mouth silently swearing.
Nico paused. “…You’ve never approached me with a normal greeting before.”
“Hm?” Zhou sounded pleased. “That’s how I knew I ran into a false you too.”
Nico lowered an ear. “You could tell from a greeting?”
Zhou laughed, thumbs hooked in his pockets. “Yeah. It was weird that you found me first.”
Nico wasn’t sure how to feel about that. “…I can also smell the ozone emanating off the fake,” he said, ears warming as he added on a partial truth for reasons he didn’t want to examine too closely.
“Mmm. Something like that for me too. Your mana signature felt off,” Zhou replied. Even behind the full mask, the smile was loud.
Everything in the rift smelled like ozone.
In reality, Nico could have identified a Riftborn copy by scent alone, but here the air was saturated, and the false Zhou stood too far away. At best, Nico could only sense a dense concentration of unstable mana. What he withheld was that he had recognized the real Zhou by the jasmine. His scent was a touch different from the marshland jasmine growing in Tellur; something the false version couldn’t quite replicate. Admitting he could discern that level of minutiae would be mortifying. Especially because he remembered he was furious at Zhou right now.
And now that they were just standing around, he hated that the rift clothes looked good on Zhou too.